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Tuesday, 11 April 2017

Scraptastic Tuesday - April link up

This month I have been taking other people's orphan blocks and making

them into quilt tops for the fabulous charity Siblings Together. The charity brings brothers and sisters together in holiday camps and at weekends when they are separated in the uk care system. It keeps important family bonds going despite difficult times.

The siblings together quilt group led by Maria, Carol and I makes 100 quilts and more every year so each child can have a quilt to remember fun times with their siblings when they return to the care system be it a children's home, or foster care. But we couldn't do it without lots of help from the very generous quilting community.

If you have a few orphan blocks sitting in a box, perhaps you could do something with them for charity, or donate them to someone who will. Orphan blocks count as scraps in my book. They are scraps that are organised and pre-sewn and therefore very useful for making quilts quickly for charity or any other purpose - perhaps a quick baby quilt or birthday! So I would encourage you to have a clear out !

I received these gorgeous blocks from Trudi Wood who does the most amazing longarm quilting. She also sent me some leftover fabrics she used and some similar fabrics in the same range which helps enormously when I make new blocks to integrate with the orphan blocks.

They looked great square but putting them on point gives them more movement and makes the arrangement bigger once the setting triangles are added.

I wanted one more whole block - but what to add ? I chose this beauty from an old patchwork book; the block is called Chimney Swallow(s). I may have to make a quilt with these someday.

The other blocks are 16" so I had to increase the size of the 12" pattern in the book by one third (thanks Helen for the maths) to get the right size of templates (easy on a photocopier 133%). Then as the curves are quite gentle I managed to piece it all on my sewing machine.

Here they all are ....

I think they work well together. But I wanted them to stand out even more so added a frame which pulls out one of the colours in the block. I have used this technique before and love what it does to my blocks. It really emphasises that colour in the block, it makes them bigger of course and helps stabilise any bias edges too.

The next challenge is to fill those gaps! I was thinking of a scrappy fill in but am now considering making half blocks! Either will look good I think and you can be certain I'll be adding my scraps to the leftovers received from Trudi to make whatever goes in there!

Well it is the second Tuesday of April and time to share your scrappy projects, in progress or completed or your tips for using or organizing your scraps.

Here are our fabulous Scraptastic Tuesday Sponsors and their buttons, feel free to click through and thank them for their support:

Please join Leanne from She Can Quilt and I by linking up a blog post or flickr or instagram photo sharing a scrappy project, in progress or finished, or your thoughts on dealing with your scrap mountain:

You don't have to have joined us before, everyone is welcome.

One link per person, and it will be your entry into the random draw for the prizes. It is the same link up here and at Leanne's blog - She Can Quilt - so you only need to link up on one of our blogs.

This link is to share with our community about using your scraps, please don't use it to advertise your own products or events.

You can link up from your blog, instagram or flickr, but you have to link up to be entered in the prize draw.

Please visit at least a few of the links, they are very inspiring, and leave comments too as everyone loves to connect.

Use the Scraptastic Tuesday button and invite your friends to join us too. Please share our button, or a link or the hashtag #scraptastictuesday in your linked post or photo.

The link is open until next Monday night at 10:00 pm MST. We will announce the winners next Tuesday.

If you have trouble linking up, let me or Leanne know and we will get you sorted.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to share with us this month.

Love the block you added to the donated orphan blocks. Framing each blocks makes such an amazing difference, emphasing each block and showing them off perfectly. Great work. I am looking forward to seeing how you finish this top off.